Cybarian: The Time Travelling Warrior Review

Publisher: Ratalaika Games

Developer: Ritual Games

RRP: £4.99

This side scroller/ beat-em-up takes place in the future where the nameless barbarian finds a sword and gets teleported into his timeline to the future. Cybarian TTW as a game joins the trend of dystopian future games on the Nintendo Switch and in general.

There are four levels to play through and three difficulty modes (Easy,Normal and Hard). Even in the first level, players will find that Cybarian is challenging in that combat is sluggish with the equipped broadsides being slow to attack, so that players have to dodge the enemies on screen. Adding to the challenge is that the player must defeat the enemies on screen before being able to move, so no skipping them for speed runs. As well as enemies, there are numerous obstacles to avoid such as spikes and fountains of fire.

Slay that Bike, Cybarian!

Regardless of difficulty, the game is challenging in that for starters, the attack combo isn’t just button mashing the Y button to have multiple combos, but limits it three hits and some time is needed to follow a rhythm to perform this combo, messing up the combo can be frustrating, especially in boss battles. (The first level shows you how to perform this.) Defeating standard enemies can be challenging, put to the combo system so players have to avoid enemies instantly after attacking.

Clearing stages can unlock abilities such as rolling or throwing your sword at enemies/obstacles, which will help in the later levels, but you can’t go back and use those abilities in the first level for example, which restricts the replay value somewhat.

Also, if you die during a level, it’s back to the start of the level for the players with no checkpoints it fits the 80s/early 90s scroll em ups, Cybarian is based on. A small relief is that dying in a boss battle just put the player back at the start of the battle (hard mode is an exception to this). In the levels, there are vending machine which gives you hit points, but is stingy with them as you only get one hit point per x amount of coins (20 coins for easy, 40 coins for normal/hard).

Just roll with it.

The graphics have that dark cyberpunk vibe, yet some of it is bright and colourful in the character models and backgrounds. There is an option to have scanlines on the screen, though I found that distracting to play with, but it is a good option to have that retro vibe. The soundtrack is good, but limited as there are only four levels in the game.

Conclusion:

Cybarian: TTW is a short, yet challenging game which will please those fond of this genre. There could have been more potential for Cybarian to have modes unlocked after beating the game e.g. Boss Rush mode, Hardcore mode (One heart mode) etc.. But hopefully there will be a sequel/spiritual successor to Cybarian in the near future.

Pros:

• Great Retro-ish Graphics
• Boss Battles are tough yet exciting.

Cons:

• Control system can be tricky (combos)
• Lack for extra modes after beating the game

Score: 7 out of 10.

Cybarian: The Time Travelling Warrior is on the Nintendo Switch as well as Steam, PS4 and PS Vita.

Ratalaika Games provided 3DSBlessed with a review code for this game. Images came from Ratalaika Games’ website.

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Tags: cybarian, nintendo, ratalaika games, retro, switch

This post was written by Cyburn, posted on June 26, 2019 Wednesday at 7:28 pm